LES Could Be Getting Two More Gigantic Residential Towers
Both projects are in the early planning stages

BY TANAY WARERKAR
JUL 25, 2016

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Following news that Lower East Side residents were seeking meaningful alternatives to curb the rapid increase of planned high rises in their neighborhood comes news that the LES will have to brace for two more tall towers. The Lo-Down has learned through a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request that two separate developers are in the early planning stages of building two residential towers that could bring as many as 2,100 apartments to the neighborhood.

At 271-283 South Street, developer Starrett Corp. is planning a 60-story building with 740 apartments, with some affordable units, as Starrett plans to participate in the mayor’s Inclusionary Housing program.

At 260 South Street, developers L+M Development and the CIM Group are planning a 66-story building with 1,400 apartments, of which about 350 will be affordable. This tower is planning for the parking space currently used by another residential development, Land End II. L+M along with Nelson Management Group, is currently in the process of transforming that building. The parking lost from that space would be relocated.

These towers will be in addition to the currently under-construction, 80-story tower, One Manhattan Square, that’s being developed by Extell, and a 77-story tower being developed by JDS. And local residents are rightfully annoyed. Along with the support of their elected officials they’re calling on the city to either put these projects through a Uniform Land Use Review Procedure [ULURP] or move to rezone the neighborhood that would restrict the height of buildings to 350 feet.

The final piece of the puzzle fell into place this evening in an ambitious transformation of a stretch of the East River waterfront that will include more than two-million square feet of mixed-use development and over 2,700 new apartments. The last of three developers, Starrett Corp., briefed residents of a neighboring building tonight about their vision for a 62-story tower at 259 Clinton St.

Starrett, L+M Development Partners/CIM Group and JDS Development Group are building separate projects. Since they’re all coming together at roughly the same time, the teams agreed to take part in a joint environmental review in the Two Bridges area. The first meeting in that process takes place Thursday evening.

Last week, we sat down with Josh Siegel, president of Starrett Development, and Larry Cohen, a consultant and advisor on the project, for an early look at their plans. Starrett has been a player in the Two Bridges area for many years and has built some major New York City landmarks, including the Empire State Building, the Javits Center, Stuyvesant Town and Starrett City (Spring Creek Towers) in East New York.

In early 2015, the firm sold the housing complex known as Lands End 1 at 257-271 South St. to L+M and Nelson Management Group. But it kept a development parcel alongside the building. This is the site now being activated with a 724-foot tower encompassing 732 apartments and ground floor retail.

Like the other developments in the Two Bridges area, 25% of the apartments (183 units, according to preliminary projections) in the Starrett tower will be designated for permanent affordable housing. Noting that the company has a long history of creating affordable projects, Siegel said his mandate is, “to revitalize that tradition and to bring back the affordable housing development and other opportunities in the Starrett portfolio.”

Referring to Mayor de Blasio’s signature initiative, Siegel said, “We’re really trying to answer the mayor’s call for affordability. That’s what this project is aimed at. We are trying to answer that call to increase affordable housing, which as we all know, is always desperately needed in New York City.”

The building is being designed by Perkins-Eastman, an international architectural firm. The renderings you see here are preliminary representations of the building set to begin construction in 2018.

The tower will be built on a two-story podium, a design feature encouraged by the Department of City Planning. The first couple of floors are to be built extra high in order to clear the FDR Drive ramp directly in front of the development site. The lobby entrance will be on Clinton Street. There’s a setback on the third floor (and a terrace). The city also requested ground floor retail.

The building will be constructed about one-foot above the floodplain, with retractable flood gates in front of the retail establishments on South Street. There will be holding tanks to store excess storm water. The design will include ample landscaping in front of the building, as well as in the back of the property, where a garden is planned.

The commercial spaces will cover about 2,500 square feet. While noting that “market forces will dictate” what’s possible, Siegel said the hope is to attract retail businesses to support the local community, as an “amenity both for our residents and the residents of the area.”

The building will be located between Pier 42 to the north, which will one day feature a large park, and Pier 35, another long-delayed recreational space to the south. Developers hope the commercial tenants in the front of the building will help activate the South Street corridor (a restaurant or other food-oriented business is envisioned). “We thought it very critical,” said Siegel, “to improve and expand the retail presence along South Street. It’s a little bit quiet. We obviously want to try to enliven that a little bit.”

To put it mildly, residents in the Two Bridges neighborhood aren’t exactly overjoyed about the large-scale development hitting their once-sleepy corner of the Lower East Side. Construction problems at Extell Development’s 80-story One Manhattan Square are still fresh in their minds. Now they face the prospect of three more projects under construction at the same time. They are all three to four times taller than anything currently in the neighborhood. The L+M/CIM Group project would top out at 69 stories and include 1350 apartments. JDS’s tower would be 79 stories with 660 residential units. All of the development teams are well aware of the local sentiment and they’ve tailored their presentations to address the local worries.

During our briefing and again tonight, Starrett emphasized the creation of 165 affordable apartments and mentioned that some of the units (about 100) will likely be set aside for low-income seniors. They also pointed to resiliency measures, improvements being made to protect the immediate area from future flooding. Siegel said Starrett will do its best to limit disruptions during construction, keep the lines of communication with the local community open and to help qualified locals apply for the affordable units when the time comes. While the firm will be hiring a general contractor (it got out of the construction business long ago), it’s pledging to hire local workers.

“We don’t want to build just within the community.,” said Siegel. “We want to build with the community. We want to work with the local community — the elected officials, local stakeholders. We want to be seen as a good citizen. That’s very important to us.”

As we have reported, the city rejected a request from City Council member Margaret Chin for a full-scale land use review in the Two Bridges area. That request for a ULURP would have given the community some measure of control because City Council approval would have been required before the projects were approved. Instead, the city and the developers consented to the joint environmental review. Siegel said he believes it’s the first time this type of process has taken place in any New York City neighborhood in the absence of a rezoning.

“It’s a process,” said Siegel, “that will allow the community to both understand and be informed about the Environmental Impact Statement and then, when and if there are mitigations, for us to understand what (the community’s) priorities are so that we can respond.”

Cohen said he is passionate about the new project. In spite of skepticism about the area (see, “A Luxury Condo in a So-So Setting“), he believes Two Bridges’ time has come. “Looking at the three projects holistically, when you think about adding this number of units (to the neighborhood), density is rather low. There’s relatively little connectivity between the neighborhood and the waterfront.”

“We think that bringing more people to this neighborhood… is probably a good thing to make (the area) more vibrant, while completely respecting the character of the neighborhood and completely respecting the residents who live there. We view this as a positive. We’re trying to add something to the community.”

Starrett expects work on its tower to take about three years.

All three developers will present their plans at a public meeting Thursday at 6:30 p.m. It will be held at Gouverneur Health, 227 Madison St. Tomorrow, we will have a complete wrap-up of tonight’s meeting, including reaction from residents of Lands End 1.

__________________NEW YORK. World's capital.

“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.

Local Residents Vent About Starrett’s Proposed 62-Story Tower in Two Bridges Area

By Ed Litvak
December 13, 2016

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Residents living next door to Starrett Development’s proposed 62-story tower at 259 Clinton St. got a first look at the plans yesterday evening. You saw the renderings first last night on The Lo-Down. Now we have a follow-up, detailing reaction from residents at Lands End 1, the mixed-income property bordering the development site.

In case you missed it, Starrett is hoping to build a 732-unit rental tower with 25% of the units designated as affordable. There would be about 2,500 square feet of retail along South Street. The firm’s president, Josh Siegel, is touting the project’s focus on resiliency (there will be greenery surrounding the building, flood gates and storm water retention devices).

After a short presentation last night, residents spoke out. Lands End 1 , a 260-unit-complex, was sold by Starrett to L+M Development Partners and Nelson Management Group in 2015. Starrett kept a small parcel for future development and shifted air rights from an adjacent tax lot.

Daisy Echevarria, a member of the tenant association board, was first to speak. “The tenants reject this proposal,” she said, “to build a 62-story building on our lot.” The Starrett project and two other large-scale projects in the Two Bridges neighborhood will undergo a joint environmental review. But Echevarria called for a more thorough study of impacts in the community. “We have many, many concerns,” she added, mentioning worries about the stability of the foundation of Lands End 1. Echevarria brought up the construction of Extell’s mega-tower a few blocks away, where sidewalks buckled, streets were flooded and apartments in neighboring buildings developed cracks. “This monstrosity,” Echevarria told Siegel, “will impact our building.”

Other residents asked whether the proposal is “a done deal.” While it is an “as-of-right” project and does not require any special city waivers, the building site is located in the Two Bridges Large-Scale Development Area. An Environmental Impact Statement will be prepared and the city has the option of asking for changes in the plans.

A longtime resident said she believes the new buildings will change the entire neighborhood. “I liked the fact that it wasn’t crowded” in the Two Bridges area, she said. The proposal, she argued, “is not conducive to community.” A neighbor told the developer, “Your building is so tall. It will block our sunlight.” [Developers conceded that Lands End 1 and the new building will touch but have stated that no views will be directly blocked.] Other residents chimed in, asking, “Any particular reason it has to be so tall and so big?,” and telling Starrett, “If you really wanted to fit in within this community, you wouldn’t be building a 62-story building.”

In response, Siegel said, “We recognize it’s a prominent building, but we are building in accordance with the existing zoning.” He noted that the project is not receiving any subsidies, meaning that the market rate units must help pay for the affordable apartments. [Starrett does hope to make use of a floor area bonus in exchange for building the affordable units.]

Residents expressed other concerns, saying that existing schools, hospitals and mass transit are already overloaded and can’t absorb thousands of new residents. They voiced fears about the displacement of low-income neighbors. While acknowledging that new affordable housing will be built, they said rising housing costs in the neighborhood will put pressure on the most vulnerable tenants. Siegel said, “No one will be directly displaced by this project,” adding that Starrett wants to help local residents apply for the affordable apartments when they come online.

Following the meeting, we spoke with three tenant leaders at Lands End 1 (Daisy Echevarria, Aaron Gonzalez and Marc Richardson). Gonzalez, tenant association president, said, “The top issue for me is the multitude of buildings going up at the same time (in the neighborhood).” He mentioned the construction of Lands End 1 in 1975, using “precast concrete.” Gonzalez fears that his building could be compromised when Starrett begins to dig its foundation on the neighboring lot.

Richardson added, “I really wonder how (the project) serves our community, the existing residents who are there. I question how many of those units are going to be affordable to the community.” Richardson said he hopes the environmental review is truly focused on community needs, not simply the interests of developers. “Do we have a list of things we would like to see in the community? The answer is ‘no’ because the process is so focused on catering to what they want to do as opposed to actually providing those (local) amenities,” said Richardson.

Echevarria said it bothers her that Starrett, when it owned Lands End I, chose to leave the Mitchell Lama program. The result, she said, was displacement of longtime residents (the building has gone from being 100% affordable to 50% affordable). That was a long time ago (2004), but Echevarria said she finds it difficult to trust Starrett now given its history on the Lower East Side.

All three developers will present their plans at a public meeting Thursday at 6:30 p.m. It will be held at Gouverneur Health, 227 Madison St.

__________________NEW YORK. World's capital.

“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.

Located between Pier 42 and Pier 35, the building would be constructed on a two-story podium, with the first few floors rising high enough to clear the ramp to the FDR Drive, which sits in front of the building. The tower’s ground-floor retail will be constructed one foot above the floodplain, with flood gates and tanks created to address flooding.
The project is being designed by Perkins-Eastman.

It’s similar to the plan that was rolled out in July, which proposed 741 apartments across a 620,000-square foot, 60-story building. Starrett says 25 percent of the building’s units would be reserved for affordable housing.
In August, the Department of City Planning rejected calls for three large developments in the Two Bridges area to go through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), which would have extended each project’s approval process. The projects could add 2,700 apartments and over 2 million square feet of space to the neighborhood, larger than the Essex Crossing development.

Other residents chimed in, asking, “Any particular reason it has to be so tall and so big?,” and telling Starrett, “If you really wanted to fit in within this community, you wouldn’t be building a 62-story building.”

Any reason it has to be tall and so big??? Hmmm, because Manhattan is a village???

Its not like the housing in the area is spectacular. This will only add to the NYHA projects nearby.

With the towers nearby being much smaller than these new monoliths rising, even at 700-800 feet, given the surroundings, these will appear much taller. At least the illusion is there per say. In Midtown, these would blend into the fabric, but this location is where tall towers have a chance to really show off. Well... until the area becomes blocks of 700+ footers, then we will see.

That's why these architects need to have bangin' designs. A giant advertisement to their work, seen from the Bridges nearby, will be an epic sight.

Locals Fear Another Supertall will Rise from the Shuttered Manhattan Mini Storage Parking Lot on South Street

December 14th, 2016

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The Edison Properties-owned “Park Fast” parking lot at the corner of Market Slip and Water Street – behind Manhattan Mini Storage – closed at the end of October. Customers’ cars are gone, and the hydraulic lifts that serviced them are locked in the ground position.

So, it’s worth mentioning that readers living in the area are worried about what’s to come, given the gold rush of developers mining the Lower East Side waterfront. Indeed, when a parking lot is sealed, it’s usually the first signal that something bigger is at play. Such as another supertall development to trounce the predominantly lower-income surroundings.

However, onsite gossip points otherwise … to Verizon having taken over the lease here. Plans are not entirely clear, but we hear that the utility’s telecommunications equipment will live on this spot. Whether that means a new facility or not is still unclear.

There is no record to date of any sale here.

Edison Properties – which owns parking lots and other property around the city (e.g. The Ludlow) – purchased 210-220 South Street in 2001 for close to $30 million. Their Manhattan Mini Storage sub-label moved in shortly thereafter.

Built in 1927, this 264,752 square-foot building is historic. Before Edison acquired the property, 210-220 South Street was the newsroom and production facility for the New York Post 25 years running, and before them, home to Hearst’s Journal American.

The 264,752-square-foot factory, originally home to Hearst’s Journal-American, was the base for all Post editorial and production activities for 25 years under several different owners.

Rising tensions in Two Bridges
Even with four big towers on the way, developers are facing several hurdles in the area

January 01, 2017
By Rich Bockmann

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Michael Stern was approaching the lectern when a booming voice from the back of the Gouverneur Health building at 227 Madison Street stopped him in his tracks. “Boo!” the young man shouted, directing his anger at the JDS Development Group CEO and stunning the room into silence. “You greedy corporate fuck! Fuck JDS, you greedy corporate motherfucker!”

The guarded and low-spoken Stern stepped back as community members who showed up at the meeting to hear about three or four megaprojects coming to the Two Bridges neighborhood argued for nearly 10 minutes. On one side of the argument was a faction of attendees who wanted to hear the developers’ plans and how they would affect the neighborhood that sits between the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge. On the other side were those who felt the developers were indifferent to the community’s concerns and merely putting on a dog and pony show to inveigle public support.

The former bloc eventually won out, and for the next hour or so Stern and representatives from L+M Development Partners, CIM Group and Starrett Corporation discussed their upcoming projects, which will transform a neighborhood heavily composed of low-income and senior housing.

When Stern finally got a chance to speak, he laid out what he thought to be the big picture — the fact that all of the developers are setting aside 25 percent of their apartment units at below-market rents. “We’re building a lot of market-rate units, which I think is a big focus,” the 37-year-old developer said. “But this is also the single largest creation of affordable units in one shot in this district in a very long time.”

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration downzoned much of the Lower East Side in 2008, city planners stopped short at the boundary of the Two Bridges neighborhood, where land-use rights have largely remained frozen in time since the city passed the 1961 Zoning Resolution.

There, hidden in plain sight all those years, lies a four-block stretch along the East River with the same key elements that Gary Barnett’s Extell Development Company and Stern’s JDS, among others, used to transform West 57th Street into Billionaires’ Row.

In the blink of an eye, it seems, Two Bridges is set to undergo a radical change, with the planned gleaming towers that will range from 700 feet to more than 1,000 feet tall and add some 3,700 new apartments to the neighborhood. Industry players who know the neighborhood, however, say the influx of development should come as no shock.

“I’m not surprised by these developments,” said Michael DeCheser, an investment sales broker at Cushman & Wakefield who covers the area. “If you were a developer looking to either build inclusionary or generate inclusionary credits, these are the only blocks you could focus on in the area.”

The four-block area that major developers are homing in on contains sites big enough to include an affordable-housing component — which generates building bonuses that allow the developers to construct larger properties. The area also has the necessary R10 zoning, which allows for the densest residential buildings in the city. “If you want to build affordable housing, you have to look for R10, and there’s a very limited amount of it in Manhattan,” DeCheser said.

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the opportunistic builders, as local community groups have pushed to curb out-of-character development in Two Bridges. Back in 2013, the community planning initiative Chinatown Working Group and the Pratt Center for Community Development conducted a study that recommended rezoning the area with a height limit of 350 feet. And earlier this year, City Council member Margaret Chin, who represents the neighborhood, spearheaded a failed effort to force three of the planned towers to go through the city’s arduous Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.
City Planning Commission Chairman Carl Weisbrod determined a few months later, however, that the developers could build their towers as of right, which means no additional approvals from the city would be required.

“I understand it’s as of right, but that doesn’t mean it is right,” said Trever Holland, a member of several community groups in the neighborhood.

“There’s absolutely no infrastructure to handle the Extell [project], let alone the other projects.”

Meanwhile, change in the neighborhood may not end along the waterfront.

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There are several blocks farther inland where developers and investors can find additional opportunities to build. In November, for instance, the Midtown-based development firm Ascend Group paid $47.5 million to buy the former Bialystoker nursing home at the edge of the neighborhood at 228 East Broadway. The property came with an adjacent site at the corner of Clinton Street that holds about 40,000 square feet of development rights.

One of the difficulties with finding buildable sites in Two Bridges is the large number of city-owned properties in the neighborhood, according to data from Cushman. Out of the 30 blocks between the Brooklyn Bridge to the west and Montgomery Street to the east, 15 are owned by the city.

Still, in between East Broadway and Monroe Street lie several parking lots that could be turned into additional high-rises. At 40 Henry Street, for example, a handful of properties that run through the other side of the block to Madison Street hold nearly 72,000 square feet of development rights.

And New Jersey-based Edison Properties owns a mini-storage facility along the water at 220 South Street, west of the Manhattan Bridge. The site is currently zoned for manufacturing use, though one of the proposals set forth the by the Chinatown Working Group would upzone it for commercial or residential use, giving the property 670,000 buildable square feet as of right.

At the community meeting last month, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said that neighbors would have a chance to discuss things like affordability levels in the new towers and how the projects would affect school enrollment, traffic and open space. The existence of the towers themselves, however, was a done deal, she noted.

“Would I like to have smaller buildings? Yes,” Brewer said. “But I’m not so sure that would be as possible, but almost everything else is on the table.”

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259 Clinton Street (Starrett)

Filling in the last piece of the four-megaproject puzzle, Starrett plans to build a 62-story rental tower with 732 apartments at a development site at 259 Clinton Street, located between Pier 42 and Pier 35.

In 2015, the Midtown-based company sold the 258-unit, mixed-income Lands End I building at 257-271 South Street to L+M and Queens-based Nelson Management Group but kept the adjacent development site, where it now plans to build its 620,000-square-foot tower.

Starrett — which has played an active role in affordable-housing creation in the past — will set aside 183 units in the building at below-market rents, according to a preliminary proposal.

“We’re really trying to answer the mayor’s call for affordability,” Josh Siegel, one of the company’s executives in charge of development and acquisition, told residents at the community meeting. “That’s what this project is aimed at. We are trying to answer that call to increase affordable housing, which as we all know is always desperately needed in New York City.”

Perkins Eastman’s Michael Lew, the architect on the project, said the completed project will also include about 2,500 square feet of retail on South Street, adjacent to the elevated FDR Drive roadway.

“One thing that we’re looking at is trying to really activate the streetscape around there,” Lew said.

The developer plans to begin construction on the tower in 2018 with no completion date specified. Representatives for Starrett could not be reached for further comment.

__________________NEW YORK. World's capital.

“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.

LES Residents at De Blasio Town Hall: Don’t Let High-Rises Push Us Out

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Over 300 residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown gathered in a Bowery gym for Mayor de Blasio’s 27th town hall Wednesday, and we probably don’t have to tell you what the theme of the evening was. You guessed it: gentrification, particularly with regard to the 60-plus-story towers rising over Two Bridges.

Both protesters outside and participants inside stated that the city isn’t doing enough to protect its low- and middle-income families. A woman in a wheelchair shared the story of how she had succumbed to a stroke due to the pressures of a bullying landlord. Someone else plead for protection of local mom ‘n pops, while a third explained that she wasn’t able to find an affordable home in Two Bridges, where she had lived all her life. She said that, because of the expensive high-rise buildings going up all around them, she, her husband and their newborn were stuck living at her mom’s.

De Blasio said that he understood why a lot of anger is directed at “the big new building.” He added, however, that “the big new building is just a symptom of something that’s been going on for a lot of time.” Referring to his own stint as an NYU undergrad, the mayor described how he has seen the East Village and the Lower East Side change over the past 40 years from a place “nobody wanted to live” to popular hot spots of gentrification. He urged people to see both sides of the issue, noting that “gentrification brought more safety, more economic development.” Bigger trends changed the reality in the city, he said, not just the new high-rise buildings.

These people are stupid and unfortunately there's nobody to educate them. The politicians try to pander instead telling them the truth.

Restricting development and building size and/or height would only lead to faster rising housing costs and gentrification.

Instead of fighting these buildings, they should be asking for developers to build more buildings and include more affordable units in them.

Putting a limit on supply means the poorest will lose out in an economic musical chairs. For example, if there 10 housing units and there are 12 applicants, then the 10 highest income applicants will always end up get those 10 units and the two lowest income applicants lose out. That is the economics of gentrification, simplified.